Another National Math Curriculum Statement

I posted the following comment on edspresso on 2-12-07 in response to The Poisonous Politics of Implementation by Neal McCluskey. Same old, same old??

I have been advocating for national math standards for the past three decades. Its time has come. Despite all the negativity, skepticism and distrust the bottom line is that what we currently have in ALL disciplines is chaos with the result that our children fall further behind other industrialized nations moment my moment. Fifty states with fifty different sets of standards (yes, there is overlap but they are not congruent) with fifty different sets of assessments with fifty different levels of proficiency adds up to what -- let me get my calculator to do the math...
Ultimately, most teachers, including myself, will teach essentially what is in the textbooks and will stress the content and types of questions that are on the high-stakes tests for which they are held accountable. As an AP teacher for 35 years, I am proud to say I 'taught to the test' -- one of the better quality tests I've seen constructed. However, I never felt constricted by a straight-jacket curriculum. My methods and creativity were never affected. I felt crunched by time to cover all the topics in the BC course in 8 months but somehow we got through it and I knew in the end that my students were at least as well prepared for the next level as any other student in any other BC Calc class. I knew that because of their performance in my class which was then validated by the results of the standardized AP test. I saw a reasonable correlation between a '5' on the test and an A or B in class and so on. Could I have taught the same quality course without this 'nationalized' Calculus curriculum. Quality, yes, but I don't think the content and emphasis would have been consistent with the thousands of other calculus classes around the country. Just look at how similar or dissimilar Precalculus classes are from classroom to classroom, never mind state to state. Yes, the road to a standard curriculum is a mine field but the road we're on now leads only to an abyss. I'll take my chances...